The Mountainy Singer

This book is made up of a selection from the Author’s early books, with many new poems added.

A LINE’S A SPEECH

 
A line’s a speech;
So here’s a line
To say this pedlar’s pack
Of mine
Is not a book —
But a journey thro’
Mountainy places,
Ever in view
Of the sea and the fields,
With the rough wind
Blowing over the leagues
Behind!
 

I AM THE MOUNTAINY SINGER

 
I am the mountainy singer —
The voice of the peasant’s dream,
The cry of the wind on the wooded hill,
The leap of the fish in the stream.
 
 
Quiet and love I sing —
The carn on the mountain crest,
The cailin in her lover’s arms,
The child at its mother’s breast.
 
 
Beauty and peace I sing —
The fire on the open hearth,
The cailleach spinning at her wheel,
The plough in the broken earth.
 
 
Travail and pain I sing —
The bride on the childing bed,
The dark man labouring at his rhymes,
The ewe in the lambing shed.
 
 
Sorrow and death I sing —
The canker come on the corn,
The fisher lost in the mountain loch,
The cry at the mouth of morn.
 
 
No other life I sing,
For I am sprung of the stock
That broke the hilly land for bread,
And built the nest in the rock!
 

WHEN ROOKS FLY HOMEWARD

 
When rooks fly homeward
And shadows fall,
When roses fold
On the hay-yard wall,
When blind moths flutter
By door and tree,
Then comes the quiet
Of Christ to me.
 
 
When stars look out
On the Children’s Path
And grey mists gather
On carn and rath,
When night is one
With the brooding sea,
Then comes the quiet
Of Christ to me.
 

I SPIN MY GOLDEN WEB

 
I spin my golden web in the sun:
The cherries tremble, the light is done.
 
 
A sudden wind sweeps over the bay,
And carries my golden web away!
 

CHERRY VALLEY

 
In Cherry Valley the cherries blow:
The valley paths are white as snow.
 
 
And in their time with clusters red
The scented boughs are crimsonèd.
 
 
Even now the moon is looking thro’
The glimmer of the honey dew.
 
 
A petal trembles to the grass,
The feet of fairies pass and pass.
 
 
By them, I know, all beauty comes
To me, a habitan of slums.
 
 
I sing no rune, I say no line:
The gift of second sight is mine!
 

DARKNESS

 
Darkness.
I stop to watch a star shine in the boghole —
A star no longer, but a silver ribbon of light.
I look at it, and pass on.
 

MY FIDIL IS SINGING

 
My fidil is singing
Into the air;
The wind is stirring,
The moon is fair.
 
 
A shadow wanders
Along the road;
It stops to listen,
And drops its load.
 
 
Dreams for a space
Upon the moon,
Then passes, humming
My mountain tune.
 

THE GOAT-DEALER

 
Did you see the goat-dealer
All in his jacket green?
I met him on the rocky road
’Twixt this and Baile-doirin.
 
 
A hundred nannies ran before,
And a she-ass behind,
And then the old wanderer himself,
Burnt red with sun and wind.
 
 
He gave me the time-a-day
And doitered over the hill,
Walloping his gay ashplant
And shouting his fill.
 
 
I think I hear him yet,
Tho’ it’s a giant’s cry
From where I hailed him first,
Standing up to the sky.
 
 
Is that Puck Green I see beyond?
It is, and the stir is there.
By the holy hat, I know then —
He’s making for Puck Fair!
 

WHY CRUSH THE CLARET ROSE

 
Why crush the claret rose
That blows
So rarely on the tree?
Wherefore the enmity, dear girl,
Betwixt the rose and thee?
Art thou not fair enough
With that dark beauty given thee,
That thou must crush the rose
That blows
So rarely on the tree!
 

LAMENT OF PADRAIC MOR MAC CRUIMIN OVER HIS SONS

 
I am Padraic Mor mac Cruimin,
Son of Domhnall of the Shroud,
Piper, like my kind before me,
To the household of MacLeod.
 
 
Death is in the seed of Cruimin —
All my music is a wail;
Early graves await the poets
And the pipers of the Gael.
 
 
Samhain gleans the golden harvests
Duly in their tide and time,
But my body’s fruit is blasted
Barely past the Bealtein prime.
 
 
Cethlenn claims the fairest fighters
Fitly for her own, her own,
But my seven sons are stricken
Where no battle-pipe is blown.
 
 
Flowers of the forest fallen
On the sliding summer stream —
Light and life and love are with me,
Then are vanished into dream.
 
 
Berried branches of the rowan
Rifled in the wizard wind —
Clan and generation leave me,
Lonely on the heath behind.
 
 
Who will soothe a father’s sorrow
When his seven sons are gone?
Who will watch him in his sleeping?
Who will wake him at the dawn?
 
 
Seven sons are taken from me
In the compass of a year;
Every bone is bose within me,
All my blood is white with fear.
 
 
Seven youths of brawn and beauty
Moulder in their mountain bed,
Up in storied Inis-Scathach
Where their fathers reaped their bread.
 
 
Nevermore upon the mountain,
Nevermore in fair or field,
Shall ye see the seven champions
Of the silver-mantled shield.
 
 
I will play the “Cumhadh na Cloinne”
Wildest of the rowth of tunes
Gathered by the love of mortal
From the olden druid runes.
 
 
Wail ye! Night is on the water;
Wind and wave are roaring loud —
Caoine for the fallen children
Of the piper of MacLeod.
 

TO A TOWN GIRL

 
Violet mystery,
Ringleted gold,
Whiteness of whiteness,
Wherefore so cold?
 
 
Silent you sit there —
Spirit and mould —
Darkening the dream
That must never be told!
 

A MARCH MOON

 
A March moon
Over the mountain crest,
Ceanabhan blowing:
Her neck and breast.
 
 
Arbutus berries
On the tree head:
Her mouth of passion,
Dewy and red.
 
 
Cold as cold
And hot as hot,
She loves me..
And she loves me not!
 

A THOUSAND FEET UP

 
A thousand feet up: twilight.
Westwards, a clump of firtrees silhouetted against a bank of blue cumulus cloud;
The June afterglow like a sea behind.
The mountain trail, white and clear where human feet have worn it, zigzagging higher and higher till it loses itself in the southern skyline.
A patch of young corn to my right hand, swaying and swaying continuously, tho’ hardly an air stirs.
A falcon wheeling overhead.
The moon rising.
The damp smell of the night in my nostrils.
 
 
O hills, O hills,
To you I lift mine eyes!
I kneel down and kiss the grass under my feet.
The sense of the mystery and infinity of things overwhelms me, annihilates me almost.
I kneel down, and silently worship.
 

THE DARK

 
This is the dark.
This is the dream that came of the dark.
This is the dreamer who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.
This is the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.
 
 
This is the love that followed the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.
 
 
This is the breast that fired the love that followed the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.
 
 
This is the song was made to the breast that fired the love that followed the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.
 
 
This is the sword that tracked the song was made to the breast that fired the love that followed the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.
 
 
This is the rope that swung the sword that tracked the song was made to the breast that fired the love that followed the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.
 
 
This is the dark that buried the rope that swung the sword that tracked the song was made to the breast that fired the love that followed the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.
 
 
This is the dark, indeed!